Dame Valerie Jane Morris Goodall (born April 3, 1934; died October 1, 2025) was an English scientist who studied primates and humans. She is known as a leader in the study of primate behavior and often called "the world's leading expert on chimpanzees." For more than 60 years, she studied wild chimpanzees in the Kasakela group at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Starting in 1960, she worked under the guidance of scientist Louis Leakey. Her research showed that chimpanzees share traits with humans, such as using tools, showing emotions, forming strong friendships, engaging in organized fighting, and passing knowledge to others. These discoveries changed the belief that humans are the only animals with such abilities.

In 1965, Goodall earned a PhD in the study of animal behavior from the University of Cambridge. During the 1960s, she wrote several articles about her research in Tanzania, including pieces for National Geographic. Her first book, In the Shadow of Man (1971), was translated into 48 languages. In 1977, she created the Jane Goodall Institute to help protect wildlife. In 1991, she started the Roots & Shoots program, which became a worldwide youth network. Goodall also helped create wildlife sanctuaries and reforestation projects in Africa and worked to improve how animals are treated in testing, farming, and captivity.

In 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. She advised groups like Save the Chimps and the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. Over her career, Goodall wrote 32 books, 15 of which were for children, and appeared in more than 40 films. She traveled widely to teach about conservation and climate change. She was an honorary member of the World Future Council. She received many honors, including the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal, the Kyoto Prize, the Templeton Prize, and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II named her a dame commander of the Order of the British Empire. Goodall served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project from 2022 until her death.

Early life

Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall was born in April 1934 in Hampstead, London, to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall, a businessman, and Margaret Myfanwe Joseph, a novelist from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire. Margaret wrote books under the name Vanne Morris-Goodall.

After moving to Bournemouth, Goodall attended Uplands School, a private school in Poole, which is a nearby town.

As a child, Goodall’s father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee instead of a teddy bear. Goodall said she loved animals because of Jubilee. She once said her mother’s friends were surprised by the toy, thinking it might scare her. In 2000, Jubilee was still on Goodall’s dresser in London.

Goodall always liked animals and Africa. In 1957, she visited a friend’s farm in the White Highlands of Kenya. From there, she found work as a secretary. Following her friend’s advice, she called Louis Leakey, a Kenyan archaeologist and paleontologist, to arrange a meeting about animals. Leakey believed studying living great apes might help understand how early humans behaved. He was looking for someone to study chimpanzees but did not share this idea openly. Instead, he asked Goodall to work as his secretary. After getting permission from his co-researcher and wife, Mary Leakey, a paleoanthropologist, Louis sent Goodall to Olduvai Gorge in Tanganyika (later part of Tanzania), where he explained his plans.

Education

In 1958, Louis Leakey sent Jane Goodall to London to study primate behavior with Osman Hill and primate anatomy with John Napier. Leakey helped raise money, and on July 14, 1960, Goodall traveled to Gombe Stream National Park. She became the first of a group later known as the Trimates. Her mother joined her because the chief warden, David Anstey, required her presence to ensure their safety. Goodall said her mother supported her in pursuing a career in primatology, a field mostly led by men at the time. When Goodall began her research in the late 1950s, women were not widely accepted in the field. By 2019, the field had nearly equal numbers of men and women, in part because of Goodall’s work and her efforts to encourage young women to join.

In 1962, Leakey arranged funding for Goodall to attend the University of Cambridge, even though she did not have a degree. She became the eighth person allowed to earn a PhD at Cambridge without first having a bachelor’s degree. Goodall studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, to complete a Doctor of Philosophy degree in ethology, the study of animal behavior. Her thesis, finished in 1966 under Robert Hinde’s guidance, described her first five years of research on chimpanzees at the Gombe Reserve.

On June 19, 2006, the Open University of Tanzania gave Goodall an honorary Doctor of Science degree. In 2019, she became an honorary fellow of Newnham College (her former school) and Darwin College, Cambridge. That same year, she received another honorary doctorate.

Work

Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzee social and family life in 1960 with the Kasakela chimpanzee group in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She discovered that chimpanzees have personalities, can think logically, and experience emotions such as happiness and sadness. She observed behaviors like hugs, kisses, and tickling, which are often seen in humans. Goodall explained that these actions show the strong, caring relationships between family members and others in a chimpanzee community. These bonds can last for more than 50 years.

Goodall’s research at Gombe Stream changed two long-held beliefs. First, it was believed only humans could make and use tools. Second, it was thought chimpanzees only ate plants. Goodall saw a chimpanzee use grass stalks to "fish" for termites by inserting them into termite mounds and pulling them out covered in termites. She also noticed chimpanzees stripping leaves from twigs to make tools more useful. This challenged the idea that humans were the only "toolmakers." In response, Louis Leakey wrote, “We must now redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human!”

Goodall observed that chimpanzees can be aggressive. She saw dominant females kill the babies of other females to keep their power, and in some cases, they even ate the babies. She described the 1974–1978 Gombe Chimpanzee War in her 1990 book, Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe. Her findings showed how similar chimpanzee social behavior is to humans.

Goodall also found that chimpanzees hunt and eat smaller primates, such as colobus monkeys. She watched a group of chimpanzees trap a colobus monkey in a tree, then one chimpanzee climbed up and killed it. The others shared the meat with the rest of the troop. Each year, chimpanzees at Gombe kill and eat about one-third of the colobus monkeys in the park. This discovery changed how scientists thought about chimpanzee diets and behavior.

Goodall named the chimpanzees she studied instead of giving them numbers, which was common at the time. Researchers believed numbering helped avoid emotional bias. Goodall formed close bonds with the chimpanzees and became the only human accepted into their society. Some chimpanzees she named include David Greybeard, Goliath, Mike, Humphrey, Gigi, Mr. McGregor, Flo and her children, and Frodo.

In 1977, Goodall created the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) to support research at Gombe and protect chimpanzees and their habitats. The JGI has offices worldwide and runs programs in Africa focused on conservation and education. Its youth program, Roots & Shoots, began in 1991 with 12 teenagers in Tanzania. As of 2010, the program had groups in over 100 countries.

In 1992, Goodall founded the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Centre in the Republic of Congo to care for chimpanzees orphaned by the bush-meat trade. The center houses over 100 chimpanzees on three islands.

In 1994, Goodall started the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education (TACARE) project to protect chimpanzee habitats by replanting trees and teaching local communities about sustainable farming. TACARE also helps young girls by providing reproductive health education and scholarships.

In the mid-1990s, Goodall’s home in Tanzania had too many notes, photos, and data. The Jane Goodall Institute’s Center for Primate Studies was created at the University of Minnesota to organize this information. By 2011, all of Goodall’s original records were digitized and stored online. In 2011, the archives were moved to Duke University, where Anne E. Pusey oversaw the collection.

In 2018 and 2020, Goodall partnered with Michael Cammarata to create natural product lines. Five percent of sales from these products support the Jane Goodall Institute.

Since 2004, Goodall has focused on advocating for chimpanzees and the environment, traveling nearly 300 days a year. She also served on the advisory council for Save the Chimps, a chimpanzee sanctuary in Florida.

Goodall was on the advisory board for The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). She credited a 1986 conference, Understanding Chimpanzees, with shifting her focus to broader conservation efforts. She was the former president of Advocates for Animals, an organization based in Scotland that opposes the use of animals in research, zoos, farming, and sports.

Goodall was a vegetarian and later became a vegan, advocating for ethical, environmental, and health reasons. In The Inner World of Farm Animals (2009), she wrote that farm animals are intelligent and deserve respect. She also authored a cookbook titled Eat Meat Less in 2021.

Goodall spoke about the effects of climate change on endangered species like chimpanzees. She continued to raise awareness about environmental issues until her death.

Opinions and written works

Jane Goodall supported the idea that undiscovered primate species might still exist, including cryptids like Sasquatch, Yeren, and other types of Bigfoot. She discussed this possibility in interviews and debates. In 2012, when asked by the Huffington Post, Goodall said, "I'm fascinated and would love them to exist," adding, "It is strange that no authentic evidence of Bigfoot has ever been found, but I have read all the accounts."

Goodall was raised in a Christian congregationalist family. As a young woman, she took night classes in Theosophy. Her family occasionally attended church, but Goodall began going more regularly as a teenager after a new minister, Trevor Davies, joined the church. She described him as highly intelligent and said his sermons were powerful and thought-provoking. She added, "I could have listened to his voice for hours… I fell in love with him… I went to church without being asked." Later, she wrote that by the time she reached Cambridge at age 27, her beliefs were already formed, and she was not influenced by the atheism or agnosticism of many scientific colleagues.

In her book Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999), Goodall described a mystical experience she had at Notre Dame Cathedral in 1977. She wrote, "Since I cannot believe this was a result of chance, I must believe in a guiding power in the universe—meaning, I must believe in God." In 2010, she said, "I don’t know who or what God is, but I believe in a great spiritual power. I feel it most when I am in nature. It is something bigger and stronger than me or anyone else." When asked if she still considers herself a Christian, she said, "I suppose so; I was raised as a Christian." She also stated she saw no contradiction between belief in God and the theory of evolution.

In the 2017 book The Intelligence of the Cosmos by Ervin Laszlo, Goodall wrote a foreword in which she said, "We must accept that an Intelligence guides the process of evolution. The universe and life on Earth are inspired and informed by an unknown and unknowable Creator, a Supreme Being, a Great Spiritual Power."

In 2013, Goodall co-wrote the book Seeds of Hope with Gail Hudson, which discussed the importance of trees and plants. However, Hachette Book Group did not release the book after a reviewer found uncredited sections copied from websites about organic tea, tobacco, and an astrology site, as well as from Wikipedia. Goodall apologized, saying, "It is important to me that proper sources are credited. I will work with my team to address all concerns and ensure the book meets high standards when it is released."

The book was published on April 1, 2014, after review and the addition of 57 pages of endnotes. After the release, Goodall blamed her "chaotic note-taking" for the plagiarism accusations and revised the book following the allegations.

Personal life

Jane Goodall was married two times. On March 28, 1964, she married Baron Hugo van Lawick, a Dutch nobleman and wildlife photographer, in a ceremony at Chelsea Old Church in London. During their marriage, she was known as Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall. The couple had one son, Hugo, who was nicknamed "Grub," and he was born in 1967. Goodall and Van Lawick divorced in 1974. The next year, she married Derek Bryceson, a former member of Tanzania's parliament and the director of the country's national parks. Bryceson passed away from cancer in October 1980. Because of his role in Tanzania's government, Bryceson helped protect Goodall's research and stopped tourism at Gombe.

Goodall said that dogs, not the chimpanzees she studied, were her favorite animals. She had a condition called prosopagnosia, which made it hard for her to recognize familiar faces. She lived in Bournemouth, England.

Goodall died of cardiac arrest while sleeping at the home of a friend in Beverly Hills, California, on October 1, 2025, at the age of 91. She had been on a speaking tour in the United States. Her death happened exactly 45 years after her husband, Bryceson, died.

After her death, many important people honored her, including Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; former U.S. Vice President Al Gore; former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; comedian Ellen DeGeneres; actor Leonardo DiCaprio; and António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General.

In October 2025, Netflix released the first episode of Famous Last Words. In the episode, Goodall was interviewed by Brad Falchuk.

In popular culture

Stevie Nicks wrote the song "Jane" in 1990 to honor Jane Goodall's life and work. This song is the final track on Nicks's 1994 album Street Angel.

On March 3, 2022, during Women's History Month and International Women's Day, the Lego Group released set number 40530, A Jane Goodall Tribute. This set includes a minifigure of Jane Goodall and three chimpanzees in an African forest scene.

In 2022, Mattel created a Barbie-themed doll of Jane Goodall made from recycled plastic. The doll wears field clothing, binoculars, and a notebook. Mattel stated the doll was made to recognize Goodall's "many years of dedication, groundbreaking research, and achievements as a conservationist, animal behavior expert, and activist."

In 1987, Gary Larson drew a Far Side cartoon showing two chimpanzees grooming. One chimp finds a blonde hair and says, "Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" The Jane Goodall Institute called the cartoon an "atrocity" in a letter to Larson and his publishers. At the time, Goodall was in Africa but later found the cartoon amusing. She named it her favorite pop culture depiction of herself.

Larson donated profits from selling a shirt with the cartoon to the Jane Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote the preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, explaining her perspective on the controversy. She praised Larson's creative ideas, which often compare human and animal behavior. In 1988, Larson visited Goodall's research center in Tanzania. While there, he was attacked by a chimpanzee named Frodo.

In 2001, The Simpsons created a parody of Jane Goodall in the episode "Simpson Safari," where a character named Dr. Joan Bushwell was indirectly based on her. In 2019, Goodall voiced herself in the episode "Gorillas on the Mast."

Goodall also voiced herself in the Wild Thornberrys episode "The Trouble with Darwin," where she is shown visiting a chimpanzee sanctuary in Tanzania. This episode was later turned into a children's book by Kiki Thorpe.

In February 2021, Apple TV+ ordered a live-action/animation hybrid educational children's show called Jane. The show, created by J. J. Johnson and co-produced by Sinking Ship Entertainment and the Jane Goodall Institute, was based on Goodall's work. It ran for three seasons, and Goodall appeared as herself in the twentieth and final episode, which aired on April 18, 2025.

In October 2025, after Goodall's death, it was announced that a documentary about her life was being made by filmmaker Richard Ladkani.

Awards and recognition

Jane Goodall received many honors for her work in environmental and humanitarian fields. In 1995, she was named a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to zoology" as part of the New Year Honours. In 2003, she was promoted to Dame Commander of the same Order (DBE) "for services to the environment and conservation" through the Birthday Honours. A ceremony at Buckingham Palace in 2004 honored her as a Dame. In 2002, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan named her a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Other honors included the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the French Legion of Honour, Tanzania’s Order of the Torch of Kilimanjaro, Japan’s Kyoto Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Science, the Gandhi-King Award for Nonviolence, and the Spanish Prince of Asturias Awards.

Goodall received recognition from governments, schools, institutions, and charities worldwide. The Walt Disney Company honored her with a plaque on the Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, along with a carving of David Greybeard, the chimpanzee who first approached her during her research in Gombe. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

In 2010, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds held a concert in Washington, D.C., to celebrate "Gombe 50," marking 50 years of Goodall’s chimpanzee research. Time magazine listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019. In 2021, she received the Templeton Prize.

On December 31, 2021, Goodall was the guest editor of the BBC Radio Four Today programme and chose Francis Collins to present Thought for the Day. In 2022, she was awarded the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication for her research on wild chimpanzee social and family interactions. In April 2023, she was honored as an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in The Hague, Netherlands. In October 2024, she gave a speech at UNESCO titled "A Speech for History." In January 2025, U.S. President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In December 2025, PETA posthumously honored her with their "Person of the Year" award, recognizing her "legacy of kindness."

Works

• 1969: My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.
• 1971: Innocent Killers (with H. van Lawick). Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Collins.
• 1971: In the Shadow of Man. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Collins. Published in 48 languages.
• 1986: The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Boston: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press. Published also in Japanese and Russian. R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Technical, Scientific or Medical book of 1986, to Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Boston. The Wildlife Society (USA) Award for "Outstanding Publication in Wildlife Ecology and Management."
• 1990: Through a Window: 30 Years Observing the Gombe Chimpanzees. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Translated into more than 15 languages. 1991 Penguin edition, UK. American Library Association "Best" list among Nine Notable Books (Nonfiction) for 1991.
• 1991: Visions of Caliban (co-authored with Dale Peterson, PhD). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. New York Times "Notable Book" for 1993. Library Journal "Best Sci-Tech Book" for 1993.
• 1999: Brutal Kinship (with Michael Nichols). New York: Aperture Foundation.
• 1999: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (with Phillip Berman). New York: Warner Books, Inc. Translated into Japanese and Portuguese.
• 2000: 40 Years at Gombe. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang.
• 2000: Africa In My Blood (edited by Dale Peterson). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• 2001: Beyond Innocence: An Autobiography in Letters, the Later Years (edited by Dale Peterson). New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-618-12520-5.
• 2002: The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love (with Marc Bekoff). San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
• 2005: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating. New York: Warner Books, Inc. ISBN 0-446-53362-9.
• 2009: Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species Are Being Rescued from the Brink. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0-446-58177-1.
• 2013: Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants (with Gail Hudson). Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 1-4555-1322-9.
• 2021: The Book of Hope, with Douglas Abrams and Gail Hudson. Viking.

• 1972: Grub: The Bush Baby (with H. van Lawick). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• 1988: My Life with the Chimpanzees. New York: Byron Preiss Visual Publications, Inc. Translated into French, Japanese and Chinese. Parenting's Reading-Magic Award for Outstanding Book for Children, 1989.
• 1989: The Chimpanzee Family Book. Saxonville: Picture Book Studio; Munich: Neugebauer Press; London: Picture Book Studio. Translated into more than 15 languages, including Japanese and Swahili. The UNICEF Award for the best children's book of 1989. Austrian state prize for best children's book of 1990.
• 1989: Jane Goodall's Animal World: Chimps. New York: Macmillan.
• 1989: Animal Family Series: Chimpanzee Family; Lion Family; Elephant Family; Zebra Family; Giraffe Family; Baboon Family; Hyena Family; Wildebeest Family. Toronto: Madison Marketing Ltd.
• 1994: With Love. New York; London: North-South Books. Translated into German, French, Italian, and Japanese.
• 1999: Dr. White (illustrated by Julie Litty). New York: North-South Books.
• 2000: The Eagle & the Wren (illustrated by Alexander Reichstein). New York: North-South Books.
• 2001: Chimpanzees I Love: Saving Their World and Ours. New York: Scholastic Press.
• 2002: (Foreword) "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth by Eric Carle. Philomel Books.
• 2004: Rickie and Henri: A True Story (with Alan Marks). Penguin Young Readers Group.

Goodall is the subject of more than 40 films:

• 1965: Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees. National Geographic Society.
• 1973: Jane Goodall and the World of Animal Behavior: The Wild Dogs of Africa with Hugo van Lawick.
• 1975: Miss Goodall: The Hyena Story: The World of Animal Behavior Series 16mm for DiscoVision (not released on LaserDisc).
• 1976: "Lions of the Serengeti," an episode of The World About Us on BBC2.
• 1984: Among the Wild Chimpanzees. National Geographic Special.
• 1988: People of the Forest with Hugo van Lawick.
• 1990: Chimpanzee Alert in the Nature Watch Series, Central Television.
• 1990: The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall. National Geographic Society.
• 1990: The Gombe Chimpanzees. Bavarian Television.
• 1995: Fifi's Boys for the